Free Download Manager (FDM) is a feature-rich tool for handling and accelerating downloads. Includes a site explorer, offline website downloader, scheduler, video downloader (YouTube, Google Video etc.), BitTorrent support and more. An included media file preview prevents downloading mislabeled music or video while a ZIP file preview tool saves download time and bandwidth by selectively removing unneeded parts. A hash check capability can verify downloads and the program can be controlled remotely over the Internet (fdmwi.exe).

Especially useful to overcome unreliable/slow connections that require frequent download restarts, when bandwidth is at a premium, or for very large files.

27 comments on Free Download Manager

Love this program particularly for infrequent or bad internet connections. Helps restart, resume, and find the best connections for downloads. I also use it for the occasional Linux or other big file distribution torrent.

Excellent program. Seems to have everything that my commercial downloader program (IDM) has and more. Didn't test for browser integration or website downloader because i don't really need, but everything else works great.

An update, what a nice surprise. Back when Firefox was always crashing between downloads and browsing this thing was indispensable. Since then Firefox has become much more stable and ad-dons Video Download Manager, DownThemAll, DownloadStatusBar have matured in development and are very well integrated into the browser they pretty much turn external download managers into unnecessary clutter. But I'll have to have a go at this, it's been a few years since I tried it. Also the new version uses VS2010 which only supports Win XP to Win 7, the entry should reflect that.

V3.8 build 1173

Abhishek2011-02-25 04:58

Hey, I am using build 852 and its gr8. Just do a lil bit of settings to customize as per your need.It also integrates itself in IE and may be other browsers also, and these integrations disappear as soon as you close it.Now, thats what you call portable !!

V3.0 build 852

Samantha2010-08-08 11:17

Good Program, but I use [Sharing Max] which actually helps me a lot while downloading stuff , it's fast , easy to use , can download a lot of stuff at the same time,It has an option for automatically downloading all links at the page whenever you enter a new site & it helps me while downloading videos from you tube or so , I just give it the link & it's it's own problem then Plus it's Free!! http://www.softwaremile.com

To clarify: The source was released more than one year ago but for the unofficial update released more than six months ago no source was released - nether has it been released for the two recent official builds. Version 3.0 should be classified as "source has been released twice", rather than "open source". The developer gave a not-terribly-encouraging reply in the forum when asked whether the code for v3.4 - currently in alpha - would be released.

After some headaches and persistence and a few tweaks, I have been using FDM now for quite awhile as a portable download manager. There is no other prog out there that is as versatile as this. I highly recommend it. You need to know a few tricks however:1. Let the settings stay in the "current user's data folder". It will remember most of its settings, but not all.2. To set the download folder to a folder on your USB drive, you need to know that the relative path to the USB drive is: %sdrive%3. As of version 3.0 build 848 you cannot turn off "automatic updates" for FDM. You also cannot remove the context menu entries from IE (or its clonies who embed IE)4. You can only download video from certain websites which FDM is pre-programmed to handle.5. You can turn on and off the torrent-download capability and it does work.6. There are many filters, but the one you want to see the most is called: "Not completed and recent" which is basically the list of downloads you are now working with.7. If you find your web-browser slowing to a crawl, then know that FDM has three download speed settings which control how much bandwidth it consumes. If your browser is too slow it is because FDM is using a lot of bandwidth. The best thing to do is to set your options in the "Network" part to "Decrease traffic on browser activity", which will automatically free your bandwidth when you browse. -God bless! -BGM

I hope that helps someone!

Tpig2009-05-16 03:21

Good downloader, work great for me.You can strip this neat app down to just 1.5mb.Only these files are needed: - Data\* - fdm.exe - fdm.tlb - fdmcs.dat - msvcp60.dll - player.swf - vistafx.dllFinally, use upx to pack fdm.exe and u get it.

BGM: Ive found that the settings is forgotten to. The settings is saved in \data\settings.dat but that file "forgets" the settings each time you restart FDM. Hope the developers see this and fixes the settings saving!!!

BGM2009-01-10 18:04

I think this FDM works great, but I don't find it very portable. I have "created" the portable version from the file menu and indeed, it has created it. But it won't remember its settings. I sure wish it had an ini file. It remembers its download folder correctly, but so many of the other options I set for it are forgotten every time. It is really dissapointing.

tun2009-01-04 05:38

How can I install plugins to portable FDM ?

Terje2008-06-18 08:48

Regarding problem integrating it to browser.An easy solution, is to install the FF-extension 'flashgot'. Through flashgot you can set your default down. manager through browsing.

Cosmo2008-05-06 05:38

I've tried to make it portable but it doesn't integrate with browser. In the not portable version it work great.. Any suggestion?

Andrew Lee2007-10-03 16:48

@deep: That's why I marked it as "Stealth: No". But none of the registry entries it creates are related to user settings. They are just working entries, so it is EXE + settings portable, just not stealth.